Reason's Debt to Freedom

Normative Appraisals, Reasons, and Free Will

Ishtiyaque Haji

Reason's Debt to Freedom

Normative Appraisals, Reasons, and Free Will

Ishtiyaque Haji

Description

To have free will with respect to an act is to have the ability both to perform and to refrain from performing it. In this book, Ishtiyaque Haji argues that no one can have practical reasons of a certain sort -- "objective reasons" -- to perform some act unless one has free will regarding that act. It follows that we cannot have objective reasons to perform an act unless we could have done otherwise. This is reason's debt to freedom. Haji argues, further, for the thesis that various things we value, such as moral and prudential obligation, intrinsic value, and a range of moral sentiments that figure centrally in interpersonal relationships, presuppose our having free will. They do so because each of these things essentially requires that we have objective reasons, the having of which, in turn, demands that we have alternatives. Finally, Haji distinguishes between two sorts of alternatives, strong or incompatibilist alternatives and weak or compatibilist alternatives. Assuming, on the one hand, that obligation and some of the other things we value require strong alternatives, he concludes that determinism precludes these things because determinism expunges strong alternatives. If, on the other hand, they require only weak alternatives, a chief compatibilist agenda of establishing the compatibility of these things with determinism without appeal to alternatives of any kind -- the semi-compatibilist's agenda -- is jeopardized.

Reason's Debt to Freedom

Normative Appraisals, Reasons, and Free Will

Ishtiyaque Haji

Author Information

Ish Haji is professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary. He has research interests in action theory, ethical theory, metaphysics, and philosophical psychology. His publications include Moral Appraisability, Deontic Morality and Control, Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Education ( with S. Cuypers), Freedom and Value, and Incompatibilism's Allure.

Reason's Debt to Freedom

Normative Appraisals, Reasons, and Free Will

Ishtiyaque Haji

Reviews and Awards

"In his impressive new book, Reason's Debt to Freedom, Ishtiyaque Haji issues a challenge to anyone who is complacent about the compatibility of causal determination with most of our central moral notions. The aim of the book is to show that the existence of objective practical reasons, moral and prudential obligation, rightness and wrongness, intrinsic value, and moral attitudes such as gratitude and forgiveness depends on the availability of alternative possibilities for action....This is an important challenge, and Haji is the first to develop it systematically and thoroughly. The arguments of the book are set out with as much clarity as their intricacy will allow.... Haji's book is highly valuable because it issues a challenge that prompts its targets to clarify and develop their views."--Derk Pereboom, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews